Beverages formed from concentrates are enjoyed around the world. An important advantage of forming a beverage from a concentrate is that only the concentrate need be shipped to the dispensing site; any available water supply at the site can be used to form the bulk of the final mixed product. An advantage in forming traditionally brewed drinks, such as tea and iced tea, from concentrate is that the time-consuming brewing process is eliminated.
There are many types of beverage making machines or appliances for forming beverages from concentrate. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,920,871 relates to a beverage making appliance in which hot water is discharged onto a brewing material, such as ground coffee or tea leaves, placed in a filter within a brewing funnel. In making iced tea, a brewed concentrate discharges from the brewing funnel and combines with cold water to form an iced tea stock. However, in this beverage making appliance, the concentrate must first be brewed and the ratio of the cold water and hot water concentrate is not precisely metered.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,309,939 and 4,579,048 relate to beverage brewing apparatuses in which beverage concentrate is first brewed from a dry beverage-making material in a funnel. The concentrate is distributed into a reservoir into which cold water is added to dilute the concentrate into an acceptable strength. However, the cold water is supplied to the reservoir after the hot concentrate begins to flow into the reservoir. Accordingly, the cold water and hot concentrate may stratify in the reservoir and not mix sufficiently.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,579,678 relates to an apparatus for automatically sweetening tea in which heated water combines with tea in a brewing station to form tea concentrate where it is mixed in a canister with a delivered sweetener. After sufficient tea concentrate is brewed and delivery of the sweetener is completed, a quantity of diluting water is mixed with the hot tea concentrate and dissolved sweetener. Because the diluting water is supplied after a complete batch of tea concentrate is brewed, the resulting mixture may stratify and not mix sufficiently.
It is known to agitate a mixture for prevention of stratification and for more effective mixing. However, more complicated structure and greater power consumption is necessary to effect agitation.
From the foregoing, it is apparent that there is still a need for an improved method and apparatus for automatically preparing beverages from concentrate and ensuring that the resulting beverage mixture is sufficiently mixed.